


Somnolence

by LooNEY_DAC



Series: LooNEY_DAC's SSSS Could-Be-Canon Thingies [1]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 19:05:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8726626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	1. Bad Dreams

The sand seeped between the cracks of the debris covering Emil, slowly burying him even deeper in the wreckage. He wasn’t sure how close the fires were, but they would get him soon enough, if the bad air didn’t.

“Emil!” He looked toward the voice. It came from a trollified version of his Uncle Torbjörn. But Torbjörn was immune, wasn’t he?

“I’ve been this way for years, Emil,” the horror hissed at him. “I’m the scout for a whole new wave of Infection that will claim even the supposedly Immune!” His maniacal laughter was interrupted by a pitching wedge to the forehead, which seemed to persuade him that it was time to leave.

The golf pro from the cover of one of the books they’d saved chased the fleeing monster, clubs ready in either hand, yelling, “For Kastrup! For Denmark! For vengeance!” From out of his wake stepped Tuuri, unmasked, looking gravely at the buried Emil.

“Quick, Emil!” Tuuri told him solemnly. “We must use the _antigravity propulsion_ unit to rescue Lalli!”

Emil followed her gesture with his eyes and saw Lalli hanging upside down by one foot, held by a giant even larger than the one they’d faced on the train. Instead of his uniform, Lalli was wearing some weird blue robe covered in stars, though, and a high, conical pointed hat, and he held a cardboard wand tipped with a yellow paper star. Lalli said something in Finnish that Emil somehow knew to mean, “Monster, begone!”, and a spray of flowers shot out from his wand. This odd display seemed to scare the giant, though, which released Lalli and skittered away. Emil saw Lalli falling and falling and falling...

“Lalli!” Emil came awake with a start. He was lying on his stomach in his bunk. The sheets had wrapped themselves around him until he could barely move. From a nearby bunk, Lalli looked at him curiously. Emil decided not to enlighten him on why he’d awakened. Even though the Finn couldn’t speak Swedish, there was a knowingness about his eyes in the dim glow illuminating the sleeping quarters.

Suddenly, Sigrun and Mikkel burst in, carrying a struggling Tuuri between them. “Quick, Emil!” Mikkel shouted. “Get me your old bandages! Tuuri has face cancer! Worst case I’ve ever seen!”

Tuuri’s head lolled back, and Emil could see a hideously colored bruise on her forehead. As he watched, it expanded down one cheek, puffing the whole side of her face out.

“Hapless, ham-fisted Swede!” Sigrun growled at him as he brought the bandages. “If you hadn’t blown the building up, we could have found the Lost Volume of How to Cure These Things! Now she’s going to die, and it’s all your fault!” Even Lalli was glaring at him now.

“I’m s-sorry,” Emil stammered, “but how else was I to stop the Demon?”

“Stand Still and Stay Silent!” Sigrun and Mikkel chorused.

Emil came awake with a start, again. Lalli looked at him curiously, just as he had earlier. Emil gingerly put his left pinky into his mouth and gently bit down, just hard enough to hurt. Ah, good. This was reality. Lalli nodded at him, as though he understood everything now, and laid back down, closing his eyes. Emil sighed and snuggled down to try to sleep again. Hopefully, this would not be a regular occurrence.

“God natt, Lalli.”

“Hyvää yötä, Emil.” Just for a moment before sleep claimed him again, Emil thought Lalli's eyes glowed pale blue...


	2. Dream Following

Mages dream, just as others do. That which non-mages ignorantly refer to as “the Dream-World” is only an intermediate stage between waking and true dreaming.

Lalli Hotakainen looked intently at the lush swamp around him, knowing that he had slipped into true dreaming at last. The swamp was almost uncomfortably warm and sticky, though the sun had nearly set, tingeing the pervasive green with a steadily deepening orange-red. He had never been in this place; he had never heard tell of a place like this. He idly wondered how many pieces of how many places his mind had stitched together to make this place.

The chattering of a stoat--wait, did stoats chatter? Well, they did here--interrupted Lalli’s idle musings. He glanced in the direction whence the noise had come and saw a moose, a boar--no, a sow--and a decidedly frightened-looking lion, but no stoat. It took no great imagination to know that these were Mikkel, Sigrun and Emil, respectively.

The light slipped away, and immediately, grossling vines bearing horribly gnashing mouths began to snake towards the four of them, ready to feed. With an angry bellow, stoat-Sigrun charged off to meet them, while peacock-Emil hissed in anger and steer-Mikkel kept placidly chewing his cud.

Lalli waited almost motionlessly. Only the twitching of his tail betrayed his readiness to pounce, but before he could, the foursome fell through the bog and plunged down, down, and yet further down through open air.

Lalli was watching the ground ever so slowly rise up to meet him when the weird gray ox with the long nose and huge ears that was Emil slid beneath him, opening those huge, huge ears until they acted like wings and the two of them slipped across the grassy earth instead of slamming into it.

Badger-Sigrun had caught a similar ride from Mikkel, and the foursome plowed to a stop close to the field of Ginsu knives and origami succotash, though why anyone would waste paper replicating maize kernels and lima beans briefly confused Lalli. Maybe it was the knives, which rattled aggressively at the four.

Before shrike-Sigrun could do more than cry out once, squirrel-Emil had leaped out in front of them all. With one mighty exhalation, he spewed fire across the field, igniting the succotash and even the knives’ handles, causing the cutlery to flee in panic.

“Moo,” moose-Mikkel said approvingly, but it was a very Danish moo, so lion-Emil looked abashed, lashing his tail in apology, though orca-Sigrun trumpeted triumphantly. Then they all climbed on her back and rode the rainbows and the lightning to go get cookies for a job well done.

Again, mages dream, just as all of us do. If they only spent time in “the Dream-World”, without the release of true dreams, their minds would snap. They simply know that they shouldn’t tell anyone else about their nightly bouts of unconscious insanity, for fear of forfeiting their dignity.


End file.
